This cake was a hit at Christmas last year and may become the holiday staple dessert. It combines my favorite chocolate cake recipe with red wine and cinnamon, adds a poached pear filling from this recipe, and a white chocolate frosting from this recipe.

This recipe was inspired by peach creamsicles – one of the quint-essential summer flavors of my childhood. But in a grown-up version with more flavor.

When walking along our local river in May, a strong scent of honeysuckle filled the air and reminded me of some of the consumable florals of my childhood. Elderflower is pretty big in Germany / Northern Europe in spring and people use it to flavor drinks, desserts, or make pancakes with them. So I ordered a bottle of elderflower syrup and came up with this recipe to use it. Note that the image here is of a deconstructed version of this cake, I cut the sponge sheet into three pieces instead of rolling it up.

For this authentic German cake, I borrowed from three different recipes:

• This recipe from The Stay at Home Chef for the most amazing, moist chocolate cake. I always use this tried and true recipe for any chocolate base.
• For the cherry filling I used this recipe from Also the Crumbs Please.
• And to stabilize the whipped cream, this recipe from Sweet Chatter came in handy. I had bad experience with whipped cream melting away before, so I wanted to make sure this one stays.

For this cake I followed this recipe pretty closely, just modifying a few things:

• Reduce sugar to 1.5 cups instead of 2 cups. I prefer my cakes not super sweet.
• Use 1 pack of pectin (the kind for jam with no added sugar) for the jam. My jam would not set at all and I found it hard to assemble the cake without a more gelled jam. With the pectin though it worked like charm and the layers had better hold.
• Use a little more lavender. I can’t say how much exactly, but I probably used about twice as much as the recipe asked for. The first time I made the recipe I couldn’t taste the lavender at all. For better flavor dispersion I also crushed the dried lavender with mortar and pestle.

Another year has passed. I mean, there are 10 days left, but really, where did time go? After a crazy hockey winter, we had a super lazy summer this year, before another hectic school and hockey season started. The main goal this year was to say no to overscheduling, reduce optional activities, and focus on quality time with friends and family instead. It’s very liberating and we definitely intend to keep this going.

With the unbusying of our lives, there was also some time to revive old hobbies and try new things. I’ve always had a sweet tooth and while I try to limit my sugar intake, when I do eat desserts, they better be amazing. So, this year I started baking cakes. Mainly for the flavor because all the traditional standard flavors you usually get it in store-bought or restaurant desserts are soooo boring. I mean a chocolate or vanilla cake can be really good, but also not very exciting. When I eat the sugar, I want to make it an experience! Who is with me?